


an empty glass is still a glass

by swag_hurts



Category: Carmen Sandiego (Cartoon 2019)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Memory Alteration, no beta we die like men, s4 spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-18 03:09:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28860099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swag_hurts/pseuds/swag_hurts
Summary: carmen sandiego reaches into a well within herself, and finds it lacking.————in which i write a lot about nothing, and explore the effects of carmen’s reprogramming
Comments: 5
Kudos: 45





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this at 4am after finishing s4 because i’m super normal

carmen sandiego reaches into a well within herself, and finds it lacking. perhaps it’s always been lacking. perhaps she’d had it ripped from her, like petals from a field daisy; a love-me-love-me-not wound, created unthinkingly and callously. she supposes it doesn’t matter. certainly not to V.I.L.E, certainly not to the only people she can safely call— not home, but something. something barbed, a long wire buried beneath her skin, tied prettily around a rib. aching and hurting and an anchor nonetheless. it’s messy. it’s all she has.

carmen covets it— she likes having things, she thinks. she must. why else is she a thief? carmen tries not to think about how everything she steals, she gives away. to the faculty. to coach brunt, or to countess cleo, or to— or, or, or, always somebody other than herself.

giving is not a quality you find in thieves. giving, by extension, is generosity. her profession demands the exact opposite. mutually exclusive, always always always, two separate things that she cannot reconcile. carmen cannot reconcile herself, a lot of the time. she looks at gray a bit too long. sometimes she feels like she could never look enough. there’s a dull pain she’s come to associate with him, and it thrums right beneath the missing piece. 

she decides it’s because he’s a threat to her spot at the top. doesn’t think about how far below her he really is. doesn’t think about the fact nobody comes close to her. she’s lonely, lonelylonelylonely, a velveted sheet of isolation keeping her peers from her. why? why? was it always like this? it cant have been. black sh— carmen, carmen sandiego, remembers having something like friends on V.I.L.E island. she wonders when they got so distant, in the years they’ve spent apart. maybe thieving was a lonely job. 

when el topo and le cheffre enter the sewer, in tandem, she looks past their shoulders brushing. contents herself to watch from afar— even lets gray make his dramatic entrance, because she’s feeling indulgent. she’s about to upstage him anyway. carmen may as well be accommodating, while she can. ‘while’, in her terms, is not very long. she finds her patience fraying these days, the end of it raw and jagged, always too soon. accommodation isn’t her strong suit anymore. was it ever? she can’t rem— she can’t think, can’t fucking think, so it’s useless to dwell. carmen makes decisions. she decides that she’s always had a temper. always felt so... inconvenienced, by the sight of other people. it’s easier that way.

carmen sandiego strides in, and she’s untouchable. she’s silhouetted in red— has been for years, embodying the colour in one way or another. la femme rouge, cries a distant voice at the back of her skull, and it itches at her subconscious like an infected bug bite. it’s just a stupid moniker. it doesn’t matter. “hola, sewer rats.” she says, chin tilted high, a smirk on her face. she’s better than them, and she knows she is. a class reunion is nothing, if not a stage for one to brag. so she embodies her success. allows herself arrogance. in front of these people, she will not be weak.

she doesn’t even remember what tigress says, honestly, but it sparks her ire nonetheless. she is aflame, just like that, crimson boiling through her veins. deft hands twist tigress’ wrist, set her claws upon herself, and carmen’s smile is nothing more than tendons working muscle, teeth bared. “always picking on somebody else.” she observes, a sudden vindictive streak lighting her impulses. “try picking your nose instead, huh?” carmen suggests, and although the taunt is childish, the way tigress’ claw threatens to poke through her own nose is not. she thinks she can see the cartilage begin to tent under the pressure, a singularly weak point positioned right at the tip of a fingernail. 

“woah, hey,” gray interrupts, making a soothing motion with his hands, “let’s focus on the heist, alright?” he suggests. carmen takes it for the out it is, dropping tigress’ hand like it’s nothing more than filth. gray’s eyes burn into the back of her neck, and carmen finds it unbearable for some reason. cant fucking stand his spooked animal act. like she’s— like she’s being weird. she raises her hands placatingly, an idle smile gracing her face. “right, right, let’s do this, then.” she says, and they do.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> will i ever write the part with shadowsan?? find out never

stealing is easy. it doesn’t require complex thought. carmen finds it as natural as breathing, and it’s a welcome respite from trying to muddle through the hazy and confusing place her mind has become. it’s even easier when she has *reason*, when she feels the urgency of a mission prickling on her skin. tonight it presses on her more than ever. her movements feel fuzzy with it, like a storm preparing to unleash, burdened with potential. carmen will have her revenge. she’ll bury every could-have might-have in the cold earth, in the form of shadowsan, and things will finally start to make sense. 

like a key into a lock, carmen sandiego will come together. she’ll finally be able to understand why she feels so inherently wrong, so inherently contradictory. as though every step she takes is in two opposite directions, and it’s splitting her in half as she goes. carmen wants to feel whole. she will. she has to. shadowsan has stolen everything from her, everything— her name, her life, her parents, and it’s a pain she feels more acutely than any stupid fucking museum feels when a jewel goes missing. she’s not here for it, anyway.

carmen is baiting a trap. the message is clear. come, defend your honour, see what you’ve done. see who you’ve made.

just as she enters the holding room, two stupid looking agents invade. they’re useless, bumbling things. clearly untrained in field combat, and wielding their stun guns like a solution. carmen could laugh. this is who they’ve sent to stop her? it’s hilarious. it’s sad. it’s familiar. none of those made sense, shouldn’t be feelings she attributed to something as inane as A.C.M.E agents. the female agent complicates things further, really, when she stops mid-fight to call something horrible and sentimental out.

“don’t you remember me? it’s your friend, jules!” she shouts, despairingly, with a pinch in her pristine brow, as if it’s supposed to mean anything to carmen. it doesn’t. it only frustrates her further, emphasises the gaping nothing that she’s full of. her laugh is bitter, and mocking. 

“the only jewels i’d like to make friends with, are in that box.” she retorts, and shoves the agent into the nearest wall and lets the tapestry take her out.

agents will be agents. what carmen doesn’t expect, has never expected, is to be ambushed by gray. he leaps onto her, with some fucking— thing, in his hands, and he jams it onto her head and begs for her to come back. as if she wasn’t standing right there. as if she’s ever been anyone but carmen. it’s pathetic. it’s infuriating. it’s horribly, horribly sad. “what are you—“ she stutters out, gloved hands scrabbling at the contraption, before flashing images interrupt her.

green, bright, blazing green. it’s sickly. it’s burning. it’s electricity and it’s painful and it *crackles*— gray is— and nothing is right and everything is wrong. she’s been betrayed. carmen looks around wildly, her eyes catching on gray. who is staring at her in desperationcontemptbeggingangeraffectionacceptanceconfusiondanger, and she barks out a laugh. “you sold me out?” she asks, and it really is a question, because nothing in her stupid fucking head makes sense. carmen rips the device off, and takes satisfaction in the way it shatters on stone.

gray just stares at her. with those stupid fucking eyes. with a hundred different versions of himself flickering across his face, to the point she can’t decipher which one is the real one. cant even tell what he’s feeling, really. carmen picks up the electricity rod, smiles, smiles and smiles and smiles. her fingerprint registers, obviously, and she dials the voltage as high as it will go. “goodbye, gray. although i guess you prefer crackle.” she says, and thrusts it directly into his abdomen.

burning flesh smells sweet.

carmen absconds with the eye of vishnu.


End file.
